Our Own Tradition
by abstractular
Summary: “How about, you and I come up with a tradition for just the two of us. We’ll do it every Christmas, just us two. Something new that we haven’t done before.”


A/N: This was written around Christmas time on the VK LJ community, I just…finally got off my butt and posted it. Enjoy!!!

The first Christmas that Kiryuu Zero had spent with the Kurosu family had been one of his worst and one of his best in many ways. His worst, because it was the first year he wasn't with _his_ family.

Christmas Eve would have been spent putting up lights on the stairwell with Ichiru as their mother moved around the kitchen baking pies and humming Christmas tunes softly under her breath. She would smile at the two boys and come up and hug them close to her, giving the spreading warmth and comfort that only a mother's hug could give. He and Ichiru would smile at each other over her shoulder and then tackle her to the floor, wrestling and squealing until their father came to her aid in a fit of laughter.

But this year there was none of that. His mother and father wouldn't be jolly and warm. They would be cold and lifeless six feet under the ground. His brother would be missing with a vampire, and Zero would be spending a normally happy time with people that were near enough to strangers.

Except the girl.

Kurosu Yuuki was a very peculiar girl. He found that out right away. Where other girls would pester him with questions on how he got bloody and why he was quiet, and then blush when they undressed him and then redressed him in fresh clothes; Yuuki didn't. She didn't ask any questions, she didn't blush when she clothed him. She simply took care of him with a gentle touch and then explained what she was going to do before she did it.

He noticed, every night since he got there, she would sit outside his door until he fell asleep. He could feel her presence from behind that wooden frame, bright and yet sad.

The first Christmas Eve at the Kurosu house he felt awkward. Everyone was laughing and smiling, like this was a normal occurrence. Like it was normal to have a vampire, a _pureblood_ vampire no less, help decorate the tree. Zero would watch from a corner of the room as the young blood drinker smiled gently at the girl and then lifted her up so she could place the star at the top of the tree. Yuuki laughed and clapped her hands as he set her on the floor again and ruffled her hair.

It was unnatural. No vampire should be that caring with a human. They shouldn't be that familiar. But he was.

Just what exactly was Kuran Kaname to Kurosu Yuuki?

It was a mystery that Zero had yet to figure out. He knew that Kuran had saved the young girl in the past; he knew that the child _clearly_ had a crush on the older boy. But their relationship went deeper than simple old friends.

It was almost like…

Zero shook his head. Impossible, Yuuki was only twelve, the vampire was fourteen, and there was no way that he could have such ideas inside his head.

But still, the way that Kuran looked at the girl was odd. He eyed her as if…she were a deity of some sort, and it made Zero highly uncomfortable.

"Zero!" The girl in question bounced over to where he sat at the table, grabbing his arm and attempting to pull him up out of the seat and over to join them. "Come on! Look! The tree is really nice! Why don't you come over and join us?"

Lilac eyes narrowed in distain. "I am not going anywhere within five feet of _him_."

Yuuki's small hands let go of his shirtsleeve and her arms dropped to her sides. She lowered her eyes in quiet rejection and nodded with a sad smile. It made Zero feel like a jerk, and he immediately wanted to explain to the younger girl that it wasn't her he was avoiding, he just-

"I understand." She said softly. "Zero is still uncomfortable around Kaname-sama. It's okay. Maybe later then."

He glanced up over her head at where Kaname stood, and caught how the young pureblood rolled his eyes and sighed heavily before placing his signature small smile on his face.

"Yuuki," He said softly. "Why don't you come open the gifts I brought you? I'll have to be leaving soon."

Yuuki spun around on her heel to face him and happily agreed, giving one lingering look to Zero as she walked towards the lightly decorative room.

That was fine with Zero. He didn't mind just watching them, it didn't feel right, suddenly being included. They had been doing this for years, and he suddenly just was dropped into their lives. If he didn't show up, if he could just contain his annoyance with the Kuran boy, then maybe Yuuki wouldn't look sad whenever she saw him. But it wasn't that simple. Hatred couldn't be given up that easily.

He ran a hand through silver locks and then sighed heavily. He pushed out his chair, the scrape of wood against wood causing the party in the other room to look over at him.

"Kiryuu-kun?" His 'foster' father questioned.

"I'm just…going to go to bed. I'm tired."

"Okay." The man smiled gently. "Sleep well."

Zero nodded and walked out of the room, quietly moving down the hall until he reached his bedroom. It was bare. It was quiet. There was life outside of this door, there was smiling people and…love…and hope. He could hear Yuuki laughing at something that Kaname had said, and he clenched his eyes shut against the sound.

He didn't want to be like this anymore.

The thirteen year old sighed and threw himself onto his bed, not bothering to change his clothes or get under the covers. He just wanted to sleep. He wondered if it were possible to sleep for a whole night. He closed his eyes, letting his body relax onto the soft blanket as he willed sleep to come. He needed sleep to come.

And when it did, he wished he could just wake up.

All he saw was red, and that woman's face kept smiling at him, sneering at her victory. At the fact that she had gained a nice little pawn, that she has achieved the ultimate chaos in someone's life. All he could see was his brother's face…his face…looking at him with such contempt as he turned the corner and followed the beautiful woman out of the room. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, he wanted to hate him but he never could. He could never hate Ichiru, no matter how much the boy had betrayed him, because they were twins. They were two halves of the same soul.

"Ichiru!"

He shot up and his breathing was erratic. It took a moment for him to realize that he was sitting in his bare room at his new home, and another moment for him to see that Yuuki was sitting next to his bed.

She looked worried, not shocked or scared, just worried. Thin brows furrowed together and she frowned in a concerned way, innocent eyes full of compassion and strength. She was in her pajamas, a light pink sweater on top of matching pants. Her body was leaning forward as if…as if she had been stroking his hair again before he woke up.

She did that a lot. Whenever Zero had a nightmare, he would wake up and she would be there, a kind smile and gentle hands soothing his hair until he fell back to sleep.

"Yuuki…"

She smiled and tucked some hair behind her ear. "I thought that I'd…well if you woke up tonight…"

She blushed before she reached her hand across the bed and grabbed his sweaty palm. Her eyes stared up into his with a tender gaze.

"Zero must have felt weird back there, huh? I thought about it after you and Kaname-sama left…Zero must have had different traditions with his family. We didn't even think to ask if there was anything that _you_ wanted to do. I'm sorry, Zero. I didn't think."

The boy cracked a small smile and exhaled quietly, his fingers curling around hers.

"It's okay. That…it's really fine."

She squeezed his hand for a second and then grinned. "I had an idea actually, if you were up for it."

Zero raised a silver brow. Yuuki stood up, and pulled on his hand until he was off of the bed and standing next to her. She made sure he was fully awake and up right before she told him her mastermind plans of genius.

"How about, you and I come up with a tradition for just the two of us. We'll do it every Christmas, just us two. Something new that we haven't done before."

He didn't reply, he simply stared at her with an expression of confusion mixed with humble gratitude. She really never thought of herself, did she? She was always thinking of other people, whether it be him or Kaname or their foster father, her heart was so large that it could fit so many people into it, and yet she never seemed to make room for herself.

He followed the pull of her hand into the kitchen. She let go of his fingers and went to the cabinet, rifling around until she came up with two sticks of chocolate pocky in between her teeth. She grinned and skipped over to him, extending her head close to his.

"Take one!"

Zero rolled his eyes and lifted a hand to grab the end of a stick, but she quickly yanked her neck back, her eyes softly chiding him.

"No, Zero, that's no fun. You have to bite the end of it and take it out like that!"

A faint pink tinged the student hunter's cheeks, but he just grunted and leaned his head down, biting the end with no chocolate and pulled it out from between her lips. He straightened up, shoving his hands in his jean pockets, as he looked away from her, suddenly very interested in the ceiling fan.

"Who told you this was the way to eat it?"

Her cheeks turned a bright red, and she fidgeted with the sleeve of her sweater as she replied.

"Kaname-sama showed me last year."

Zero twitched. Of course he did, Kaname-sama just showed her every damn thing, didn't he? He sighed and turned to face her, arms out of his pockets and crossed over his chest.

"Well, what now?"

Yuuki's blush faded and she grinned, grabbing his hand out from under his curved arm and pulling him along behind her again. He followed her into the living room and noticed that it looked a lot different than earlier that night. All the lights were off, for one, but the tree was lit up in a faint, gorgeous glow that bounced off of Yuuki's chubby, wondrous cheeks.

She turned her head towards him; smiling that special smile that only Yuuki could deliver.

"Go lay under the tree, Zero."

She looked so happy; he couldn't refuse her. He felt foolish, but he walked to the pine tree and then plopped down on the carpet, scooting further down until he could lay with his head under the tree. He felt Yuuki slide up next to him so that the two children could stare into the brightness together.

"It's pretty, isn't it?" She asked softly. "When you look up into it like this…it's almost as if it's a different world. A world where nothing bad can happen, because how could anything bad happen when something so beautiful is here?"

Zero took her words into consideration as he stared into the illuminated branches. She was right; it certainly was a breathtaking sight. The crisp scent of pine wafted around them, clearing their senses as the dark wood glittered with tiny bulbs of gold, blue, red, orange, yellow, and green. Tinsel spiraled around the needles on the branches, and ornaments dangled on the thin extensions like earrings on a queen's head.

He was almost convinced, with the sight of something so gorgeous, and only the sound of Yuuki's steady breathing next to him, that the world wasn't such an awful place. That inside these walls, next to this girl, he could find some semblance of peace. His shoulder tilted with the weight of a light head resting upon it. He looked out the corner of his eye and saw Yuuki shift her head, nestling it into him as she sighed.

"Merry Christmas, Zero."

Zero let a tiny small fall onto his lips and he put his head over hers before he closed his eyes and let slumber take him.

"Merry Christmas Yuuki."

Four years, they've done this tradition of theirs. Every year on Christmas Eve, Yuuki would pull Zero out of his bed and drag him to the kitchen, give him pocky, and then they would lie down and look up into the Christmas tree until they eventually fell asleep.

Zero turned his head to look at his companion. Yuuki, now sixteen, lay next to him with a stick of quickly shrinking pocky between her soft, pink lips. The multicolored glow from the lights brought shining warmth to her face. Her cheeks had slimmed, they no longer held their baby fat, and her smile didn't hold any tiny teeth. Her hair was shorter than it was when they first started this routine, but it didn't loose any of its softness.

Lavender eyes trailed over her features and his heart constricted in his chest. His hand twitched at his side and he clenched it to keep from lifting it up and stroking her cheek, as he wanted so badly to do.

When did this happen? When did he stop thinking of her as simply a companion, as a sister-figure, as someone who would bring him peace and hope? When did he start thinking of her as someone he could love? As someone that he would so willingly give his whole heart to if she asked for it?

When did the shift start?

His eyes trailed to her neck, to the twin puncture wounds that were just starting to heal, and he sighed softly.

It didn't matter what he thought, or what he felt. But…but then again…

Her words from four years ago echoed in his head. Yuuki turned and caught him staring at her, but he didn't look away. She smiled, the pocky completely gone, and her hand slipped into his large one.

Her warm chestnut eyes held love and devotion, serenity and safety. She sighed happily and winked at him.

"Merry Christmas, Zero."

He squeezed her hand and then let his head slither down until it rested against her shoulder, his nose burying into her shirt as he inhaled her clean, and floral scent. He felt her head rest over his and he closed his eyes.

He wasn't a monster, not tonight. He wasn't craving for blood, and she wasn't crying and trying to save his life.

Tonight, they were Zero and Yuuki, just as they have always been. He smiled into her shoulder at the fact that even after all the drama that has recently occurred in their lives, they could still hold onto this tradition with an iron grip. He felt Yuuki's nose press into his hair and his heart constricted again.

It was odd to think that he felt so awkward with her back then. Right now, he only felt like he was finally home.

His thumb idly brushed against her hand.

How could anything bad happen when something so damn beautiful was there?

Simple.

It couldn't.


End file.
